


moral merit

by Keturagh



Series: False Fruit [13]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Age Difference, Balcony Scene, Developing Relationship, Drinking, Drinking to Cope, Drunkenness, F/M, First Dance, Halamshiral (Dragon Age), POV Solas (Dragon Age), The Winter Palace (Dragon Age), age difference of like thousands of years, mentor/mentee relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21996841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Summary: For, being as it was, the moon this bright; the air a swamp overhead; the creatures of the ballroom jabbering in the reaches of their masks — this was not a thing that was made for him.Not joy.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Inquisitor, Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age)
Series: False Fruit [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579504
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	moral merit

**“if an unfortunate man, strong in soul, is indignant rather than despondent or dejected over his fate and wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving it and from neither inclination nor fear but from duty - then his maxim has moral merit.” (Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals)**

\--

This was not a place he was meant to be, nor a hand he was meant to hold.

This was not herb-scented hair that should brush his cheek. And these, not velvets that should brush against his chest.

For, being as it was, the moon this bright; the air a swamp overhead; the creatures of the ballroom jabbering in the reaches of their masks — this was not a thing that was made for him.

Not joy.

Giddy. Brightly lit. And she begged him to let her lead, just to show him what Josephine had made of her in three sessions of desperate footwork on their way to Orlais. She stepped on his foot twice. The first time, she jumped back and nearly hit him in the mouth, and the second time she collapsed entirely into laughter so that he had to catch her as she stumbled, and the wine let him laugh along, snorting at her pantomime of Josephine’s anticipated mortification. The way their Ambassador had visibly choked when the whisper passed around that the Inquisitor was leading the Duchess to the dance floor.

“And did her noble toes suffer?”

“Ha! Not one bit. Maybe,” she bumped her head to his chest, pointed straight down, swaying “you should have smaller feet.”

He took her arms and held them out to either side, leaned her back on her heels, and then led her into a lazy turn. “Truly? I’ll try.”

She laughed. It was not impressive wit but it did not need to be, thank all the sky, for at that moment she was distracted by drink and he drew her close and smoothed her in a rhythm drawn from the ends of his memory across the length of the balcony.

“What song is that?”

“Hm?”

“You were just humming — it was so soft.” Her head was laid against his chest, were her eyes closed? “But I’ve never heard that one.”

What… what had he hummed? Better to move aside the topic, to — he reached for an evasion, came up with a wry, “Is there little dancing among the Dalish?”

But then he knew this was not right, because she leaned back and looked up at him. Gave him a look of such bemused shock that he asked, feeling light, wondering if he’d said something else entirely, “What?” he asked.

“Yes. We have the little dance.”

Now it was he who was confused. “What little dance?”

Something like danger gleamed in her eyes. ”You’ve really never done the little dance, with everywhere you’ve been?”

Ah. Retreat, his mind warned him, you have taken too many cups. He first tried to find a memory of… little dance? from the impressions of this world that had moved within the Fade where Dalish dreamers walked.

No —- it was the drink fogging his memory, or it was not something he had seen.

He lifted his arm and let her pass beneath.

“I am not Dalish,” he said, and he let it have a harsh edge, hoping she would move on.

She only shrugged as if this did not have any relevance for once. “No, but would that matter for the little dance?”

He was not often ignorant, especially not with her, and it fumbled him. The uncertainty made him feel disoriented from more than just drink, caught between curiosity and betraying some essentially elvhen thing he did not know from this age.

And when he failed to come up with an answer, the wine supplied. He spun her, lent her a lop-sided smile, and asked in a tone of suggestion meant to distract and disarm, “Show me?”

Her eyes caught the moonlight and glowed, that spectral green, as she laughed. “Gladly.”

And as she came around to face him again she reached out with both hands and held his elbows, stopping him, steadying him. She stepped close. Placed one of his hands cupped on her waist. Held his other hand in hers, drawing closer. Their arms pressed together between their bodies, the back of his hand grazing her breast. He felt a sudden lump that he needed to swallow around. And then she was closer still. And she rolled her hips against him, and whispered, “Right foot forward.”

He complied, trying to lead from her words. “Half-step side. Sorry, other side. Feel me do it. Half-step side. Then — like this.” She managed to pull their bodies through a step that had more sex than sense hot in the small space left between their hips. But he felt a racing in his heart that was more embarrassment than arousal — _don’t_ , he told himself, firmly, trying to rectify allowing this dance to go on even as he felt her pressing — felt her hips squirm — in his lap —

“You a finer follow than teacher, I’m afraid, ma vhenan,” he stuttered as he pulled away, putting space between them that was entirely pragmatic.

Fiendish. That was the lay of her grin. She let him go, but made it clear she knew why he retreated.

“On the contrary, it seems I am a perfectly serviceable teacher.”

And there it was. The gentle, teasing fun, the softness within her that plucked at him, made him yearn for simpler, kinder truths. It wasn’t much of a goad. But it made him _see_ her. Made him shake his head, made him mirror her smile, made him take her hands and press her close, murmuring in violation of all that was wise, “Oh? And what would you teach me next?”

But though he danced her in her way, though he backed her against the wall and pressed a knee between her legs, though he let her feel what she’d stirred against her thigh; and even as his arm reached under her and lifted her, and while he kissed her furiously, a hand holding her chin, her hips hiking close and her tongue meeting his, the knowledge lingered in the back of his mind.

To approach happiness. To pursue life in this world he had made.

To love.

These were not things that were meant for him.

And yet.

And yet.

She sighed against him.

_It is the wine_ , he thought, coming apart. _It is the wine._


End file.
